Dragon Scales 101

[ClayDar]

Just thought Id post this over here in these forums just in case there was any interest. I had been asked several times to do a dragon scales tutorial.
Hope you like.

Ok Class welcome to Professor ClayDars' Scale Tutorial 101.
Here as promised is the first lesson. Now please keep in mind that I cannot show the motion of the tools here. It really has to be visuallized and I will give the best description I can.
First off let me show you the tools that I use to do this. A lot of you out there have one or more of the same tools I use.



This Ball tool is probably the best you can use. They come in different sizes and this one has a different size ball on either end. About what... 3 dollars at the hobby store? But really just about anything that has a small rounded end will work.
Not shown in the picture is Lighter fluid. That is what I use to smooth out my clay. So many peeps in here have there own method. This is just my personal favorite.

First let me start by showing you the dragon that I will be useing to demonstrate this toot.


Ok let me give you a little detail about this one. This dragon was made with a wire armature with Aves Apoxie Sculpt. A couple small beads for the eyes. I get the general shape of the head, place the beads (eyes) in and begin covering with Super Sculpey. The horns and spikes are all made before hand and let harden. I have thouse made in advance so when I get ready to sculpt they are hard and cannot be messed up or bent.. ect.. you get the idea. The neck is also the Aves. This really helps when we are pushing the clay around to form our scales.
Next before we get into the adding of scales we want to make sure we have all the muscles in place on our dragon.
A quick note here.. The gray Super Sculpey is from Midwest clay. The freaking hard suff. You can use any clay or wax medium that you want. It will all work the same with this technique.
Here is a pic showing muscles added to the side of the neck.

I know the pic is a little blurry. You will see a lot of this in the pics. It was rather difficult for me to hold the camera really still on some of these shots. My tripod is being used by a relative at the moment.
We will continue this Tutorial as soon as Picturetrail comes back up shortly.
ClayDar- :roll:
Due to it being 4 a.m here I will add more to this sometime durring the day. Stay tooned
ClayDar-
Ok good morning kiddies. To let you know I had just typedin a ton more info in last night only to hit the submit button and a pop up came up and I went to close it and it erased all the info I had just put in :twisted: So lets try this again. I have my caffine and nicotine. These are of course optional and yes eating and drinking are ok in my classroom.
Ok here we go..
When I left off we were just starting to blend the muscles into the dragon body. I realize a lot of this will not apply to you Suzy so bear with me a bit.


Here you can see we are working on blending the muscles into the body of the dragon.


Ok here is side one done. Now that I have this done I begin doing the otherside. You will notice that on here I have added the skin texture to the dragon. What I do here is then go over the details with my lighter fluid to blend and smooth it all together. Adding the skin texture is not a neccesary step though I do it to get a better overall feel to the sculpt and to start bringing this little guy to life. it really helps me to see if anything is needing to be added.
Now the following steps will be done on a piece of rolled out super sulpey that is lieing flat on my work surface. This is only done as a Demo. After I show the tecnique I will show how it is done on our little dragon here.
If you are new to this then you will want to practice this for a few seccions on your own before attempting to add them to your work. Although i have found that no matter what you do to an unbaked sculpture can always be easily repaired.
Lets start our demo.

Here is how we start. With the ball tool I slightly press into the clay and pull backwards. For right now all we are doing is setting up our "rough draft" pattern.

Continue in our first row by making our scale pattern.

Here is the pattern. Its like setting up bowling pins. Two in the back and one infront of the two placed in the middle of them just behind them.

Now at this point in the photo above (yes blurry again) I have started defining the scales. Basically all we do is start from the first row and "pull" each scale back and out. You can make the scales small or large depending on how much you pull the scales. Keep in mind that the larger you try to make the scales eventually the scale will be so thin that it may break. No problem you just push the clay back into the surface.

Once you get the scales to this point you can define the scales even further by boing back over each one and smoothing out the scale how you want it. It is really best to cover a large part of your work with the "undefined" scales and then go back and smooth out the details. You will find that you can place a lot of scales rather quickly over your work and then go back over it once you have the pattern and "rough" scales on your work. Ok thats were we will stop at this point.
If this is your first time feel free to paractice on some clay or wax or whatever you are useing. You can use the pink SuperSculpey. it works really well but after a while you may want to switch to the grey snce you can see the details much better. The pink suclpey is semi transparent.
That ends this lesson for now. Next we will begin adding the detail to the dragon.

ClayDar-
For some of you this may be all you need to make your scales. The others can come back and see how it is done on the actual sculpt. If you have anyquestions ask them in here since others may have the same question and I will do my best to answer them.
Ok kids lets get back to school here. Today we will begin Adding scales to our dragon. I will be showing you the scales on the front of the neck and along one side. I do this to show that in some cases we want to go from back to front and other times front to back.
Lets start with the front of the neck first.
I roll out a piece of clay and get it as close to the size as I need. I place it on the sculpt to see how close it is then begin cutting out our large scales.

I will cut out all the scales I will need for the front of the neck. I overlap them an then place back on the dragon for a test fit.

Once happy with the size I take the bottom scale off and place it on our dragon blend in the scale and start placing the others from the BOTTOM to the top. Press each scale into the neck to hold it on in place working your way towards the head. like so


Once in place I begin adding the texture and blending the scales into the neck like the pic below.

You can work this until you get the look you want or we can move on to the next step.
Useing the lessons we learned eairlier we begin adding the scales to the side of the neck. Only this time we work from FRONT to Back. Lets start adding scales. Using my ball tool again I start with the end with the smallest ball. as we move down the neck we will slowly increase the sizes of our scales.


On the upper part of the neck pattern is not much effected since the scales are all small and very close together. As we move down we will make our pattern more apperent.
At this stage I have begun using the larger ball on the tool and started makeing our pattern more obvious.

Keep in mind also that this is really the rough draft for our scales. A little work is done to smooth them out but very little. Basically I cover as much of the dragon as possible following the contures of the body and only later will I go back over the scales and "clean" them up to speak.
Again here we are working along the side sticking as close to our pattern as possible.

Sometimes you will work in areas that you have to just "wing it" and add a scale where needed even if it doesn't necessarily follow the pattern. But thats fine.

Another shot from a little farther back to show the overall look.
Ok lets move on to the head now. We can always go back and continue the neck.
For the head It gets a little tricky but not too bad. What we are going for here is all up to the artist. This one here going to be more of a "bird of prey" look too it but I follow the same basic patterns. Here I always start from under the Eyes and work my way down and back. Then I move to towards the nose and down. Here is what I mean.

The picture above shows from the eye down.

This shot from the eye forward. One more thing I forgot to mention, On the head towards the nose I face the scales from top to bottom. virtiacally. This is just my style. You may find you like the pattern different on this part. Its all up to you.
Next I continue adding and covering this side of the head. I add a few cuts into the ridge of the nose. Again I am going for a certin look here

Next here is a look from the top. Here you can see how I worked the scale pattern back across the head.

In the next shot you will notice that Under the horn I have not added any scales. That is becase I still hav not added the Lower Jaw to this sculpt and will be adding that later.

And one more pic from a differnet angle

At this point the other side will be done. Then we begin smoothing out our scales,adding other parts to this dragon to help bring it to life.
That concludes todays lesson. I hope this helps those that are interested learn some new or different techniques you might not have thought about before.

Me and little Tid Bit here are off to bed. That little guy is one of my many four legged "helpers" I think this toot has gotten him wore out.
Until next time,
ClayDar out-

[Pavel Sokov]

put super sculpey on ur cat and bake it
it would make a very realistic cat sculpture

[Andorz]

Thanks a ton for this, ClayDar! I find it extremely interesting to see how other people do their.. you know, stuff. I shall try your method as soon as i get a chance.. Argh, blast this World of Warcraft! It eats up all my non-shool-nor-homework-time

EDIT: Whats up with the whole modeling-on-a-chair-thing you got going on there?

[Saittam_j]

excellent tutorial!

and a very cute cat.

[tattoomaster]

nice work claydar,i agree with andorz,you can learn so much just by watching or listening to other people,thats what i like about this forum,i,ve learned so much already,thanks again

[ClayDar]

Thanks guys I'm glad someone in here can use this info. I have learned so much in all the sculpting forums that I am glad I can finally "give" back to other up and comming sculptors.

ClayDar-